The jobless rate among the more than 100,000 tribal members living on the reservation is about 50 percent, depending on whether traditional Navajo roles such as gathering herbs are counted as jobs.
It's an understatement to say that attracting industry to the 27,000-square-mile reservation is a challenge. It's likely the largest swath of the continental U.S. without a Starbucks, and long drives into Gallup, N.M., to fill water tanks for homes are common.
The spokesman for the tribe's power authority, Albert Shirley, is one of many people living on the reservation without electricity.
Like many Navajo, he visits a nearby mine in the winter to collect coal to burn for heat.
The importance of electricity hit home last winter, when his 28-year-old daughter-in-law fell ill during a cold snap and died, leaving behind a months-old son.
"That was a reality for me," he said. "It was so cold. I got sick myself. We took her to the hospital, but she fell so fast."
Shirley is all too familiar with the problems linked to poverty. Three years ago, his 22-year-old son, who worked as an art-exhibit tour guide for the New Mexico Legislature, was killed in a violent stabbing outside his home.
"Poverty is a factor in a lot of this," Shirley said. "People don't care. They don't have values."
Better offer
The tribe could buy in and become a partial owner of the coal plant. That's a better deal than past coal developments, some of which paid pennies per ton in mining fees and didn't offer an ownership stake.
And the project would have a Native American hiring preference, something that has served the tribe well at the nearby Four Corners Power Plant run by Arizona Public Service Co., where about 80 percent of the workers are Native American.
"We have to look at more than just the environment," Shirley said. "There is a little bit more to consider."
Desert Rock is planned south of the Four Corners plant and the coal mine that feeds it. Another plant and mine, San Juan Generating Station, lies farther north, just off the reservation, not to mention the Navajo mine to the west in Arizona, which is tapped by both Salt River Project and APS.
Some tribal members say that is more than enough.
Alice Gilmore, 76, keeps time like many Navajo her age, with a reference to The Long Walk, the military roundup of the tribe in the 1860s that temporarily removed them from the land that now is the reservation.
Gilmore grew up chasing sheep on the hills near the Desert Rock site. As she recalled her youth, the draglines from the mine could be heard across the valley.
Through a translator, she explained that relatives are buried in the area and that because of what has happened at Four Corners, she doesn't trust promises about keeping the environment clean.
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